Stadtkolloquium, in conjunction with UCL’s Urban Laboratory, is pleased to announce its annual 2-day work shop for PhD research students in urban-related disciplines. The workshop will provide an open, informal and intimate space to collaborate and discuss progress amongst peers with regard to topical, theoretical, practical or methodological concerns. We therefore welcome contributions from students at all stages of the dissertation process.

*Stadtkolloquium* aims to create a supportive environment for urban researchers who to develop their work and meet PhD students from other departments and universities. The workshop is unique in that all participants agree to both present their work and support others in doing so in small group sessions. Organizers hope to generate lively round-table discussions on diverse urban questions across various academic disciplines including Geography, Architecture, History, Anthropology, Literature, Cultural Studies, Development Studies, Fine Arts, Environmental Studies, Gender Studies, Health Sciences, Planning, Engineering and beyond.

The four thematic tracks for the 2013 workshop are:

A. Re-thinking urban economies
Explaining the growth and development of cities has been called ‘one of the great challenges for social science’ (Storper, 2011, p.33). But what is specifically ‘urban’ about the range of problems facing economies today? The increasing recognition of the partiality of urban development and growth policies (e.g. global cities; creative cities), the decoupling of economic growth from social and environmental development, the ongoing financial crisis and the emergence of austerity urbanism, as well as decreasing confidence in mainstream economics more generally, suggests that the scope for new ways of theorising, measuring and intervening in urban economies is significant. Contributions are welcomed from PhD students who are exploring some of the diverse ways in which we might re-think urban economies.

B. Post-colonial approaches to the city
An increasing amount of scholarship (Robinson 2006, Roy 2011) has emerged as a critique of the ways in which cities in the global South have been studied. This session aims to discuss cities in ways that respond to this post-colonial questioning of urban theory. How can concepts that emerged in the South, such as informality, be used in cities of the global North? How can empirical studies of cities beyond the West inform urban theory in general? How do concepts such as neo-liberalism or gentrification, change when examined in a non-Western context? The session is interested in theoretical approaches as well as methods of thinking ‘comparatively’
through both multi- and single case studies.

C. Managing the complex city
This session will explore pragmatic responses to the problem of managing cities and urban spaces understood to be complex. Such matters arise in the fields of urban design and planning, infrastructure, municipal governance and policy making where the unexpected, contingent, emergent and the nonquantifiable variously problematise efforts to control, order or regulate urban space and process. The session seeks to facilitate discussion of both empirical case studies and theoretical resources for dealing with such issues in urban scholarship.

D. Urban Assemblages
A dynamic worldview of flux and flow, uncertainty and complexity is being recognised more and more across all disciplines (Whatmore, 2006; De Landa 2006; Lash 2006; Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). But can these post-human, relational and flat ontologies cast a doubt at the appropriateness of the city as the unit of analysis for urban research? This track looks at the application of these approaches to specific cases of empirical urban research through attending to the rich array of human-nonhuman, material-immaterial, and mobile-immobile entanglements. It is specifically concerned with the empirical application of theoretical approaches like assemblages, networks, meshworks and constellations to urban research and the methodological and empirical challenges they bring about.

The workshop will take place on 25 & 26 March 2013 at University College London. On the first day, each participant will be given 20 minutes to present their work in small groups of 8 people, followed by 25 minutes of feedback and discussion. The second day will be dedicated to a plenary discussion, two keynote lectures and small group workshops based on accepted participant’s suggestions.

Call for papers
If you are interested in discussing your work, please send us an abstract (no more than 250 words) of the project you would like to present. Past participants have presented work ranging from upgrade documents, PhD outlines, sample dissertations chapters and journal papers in progress. Please note that while the intimate nature of the workshop provides a uniquely engaging experience, it also significantly limits the number of proposals we are able to accept. Competition for spaces in years past has been very tight.

Theme
Conceptions of community were at the heart of inter- and post-war discourses of (re)construction, both in communist Eastern Europe and the democratic West.
Building on political and scientific discourses of community-building, and infused by the traumatic ruptures in (local) society during the Second World War, the idea of creating and sustaining social coherence became a shared consensus. At various levels, and referring to a variety of collectives, ‘community’ – Gemeinschaft, gemeenschap, communauté etc. – was perceived as imperative for stability, prosperity and welfare. This conference addresses the various discourses and conceptions of community in Europe in from the end of the First World War up until the late 1960s from a multilevel perspective – local, national and transnational – and through a focus on communicative practices. The latter refers to the embeddedness of community discourse in language, but also takes into account how this discourse is – performatively – acted out in social and politico-administrative practices.Continue reading CfP CONF (Re)constructing communities in Europe, 1918-1968. A venture into the discursive practices of community building Radboud University Nijmegen / Utrecht University – Soeterbeeck Study Center, 18.-20.12.2013. Deadline: 1.3.2012

The Conference – Colonial and Postcolonial Urban Planning in Africa – aims to re-examine the history of colonial urban planning in Africa and its legacies in the post-independence period, to learn from contemporary African scholarship, and to discuss how postcolonial urban planning cultures can actually address these urban challenges and contribute effectively for the development of resilient and sustainable cities in Africa.

The Conference, to be held in Lisbon, in September 2013, organized by the Institute of Geography and Spatial Planning – University of Lisbon and the International Planning History Society (IPHS), will explore two key themes in the history of urban planning in Africa:

A 4-day conference to be held at the University of Exeter, 18-21 April 2013

We are delighted to announce that three plenary speakers have already been confirmed:

Paul Gilroy, Anthony Giddens Professor of Social Theory at the London School of Economics

Dolores Hayden, Professor of Architecture, Urbanism and American Studies at Yale University

Anders Stephanson, Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation Professor of History at Columbia University

The conference will begin after lunch on Thursday 18th April and will close after lunch on Sunday 21st April.

American Studies at Exeter
American Studies has a long-standing presence at the University of Exeter. The research interests of staff include transatlantic literary relations, American criminality, film noir, the literature of the suburbs, the Hollywood blockbuster, US immigration, Seattle in the 1990s, the American musical, the culture of the American South, Irish American identities and literature, childhood in America, the Ku Klux Klan, and contemporary American comics. The University holds several major resources that are of interest to American Studies scholars, notably the American Music Collection (one of the largest archives of American popular music outside the United States) and the Bill Douglas Centre for the History of Cinema and Popular Culture.

Exeter is located 12 miles from the sea, in the county of Devon, home to several Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, Dartmoor National Park and the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site.

Call For Papers
There is no overarching theme to the conference, and papers and panel proposals are welcomed on any subject that falls under the remit of American Studies. We invite proposals from individuals and from other interest groups including associations linked to BAAS, such as the APG, BGEAH, BrANCH, and HOTCUS. Half a century after 1963, we invite proposals inspired by the events of that year and the tumultuous decade that followed. 2013 also represents the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and we welcome suggestions for related papers and panels.

Proposals for 20-minute presentations should be a maximum of 250 words and include a provisional title. Proposals by two or more people sharing a common theme are warmly invited and we welcome panels that cross disciplinary boundaries. The conference organisers hope to continue the initiative shown at previous BAAS Annual Conferences by scheduling roundtable discussions and innovative panel presentations, and we encourage such proposals as appropriate.

Call for Papers, Society for the History of Children and Youth, June 25-27, 2013

Conference Theme: “Space and Childhood in History”

The Sixth Biennial Conference of the Society for the History of Children and Youth will be held June 25-27, 2013, at the University of Nottingham in Great Britain.

The Program Committee invites scholars to submit proposals for formal panels, roundtable discussions, and research-in-progress workshops on any aspect of the histories of children and youth, from any place and in any era. But we are especially interested in sessions that examine and compare how space and childhood are mutually constitutive in historically and geographically specific settings. Our call, inspired by the French political philosopher Henri Lefebvre, posits that for any person, including children and youth, there is a dynamic rather than a static relationship between a physical place, its social make-up, and childhood as an ideal or imagined condition. The production of space, as Lefebvre famously insisted, happens in the physical world, the social world, and the imagined world. We ask scholars to investigate space not just as a backdrop for the lived experiences of children but as a tangible, social, and discursive construction, which shapes and is shaped by the lives and experiences of children. Although committee prefers proposals for complete sessions and panels that incorporate international representation and global perspectives, individual papers will also be considered.

Session guidelines
Sessions will last approximately 90 minutes. At least fifteen minutes should be reserved for audience discussion. This may mean fewer – or shorter – formal papers, entertaining comments from the audience rather than scheduling a formal commentator, etc.

Submitting proposals
In order to be considered for the program, proposals must be received no later than October 31, 2012. They should include the following information:

The following information for all participants:
1. Names and roles (paper-presenter, chair, discussant, etc.)
2. department and institution
3. address and e-mail address

250-word abstract for each paper

2-pp. CV for each participant

Please state what, if any, audio-visual technology will be required for each session or paper.

All parts of the proposal should be gathered into one PDF document and sent as an email attachment to james.marten@marquette.edu. The program committee will finalize decisions no later than January 31,
2013.

Direct queries to the co-chairs of the program committee:
James Marten, Marquette University, james.marten@marquette.edu
Marta Gutman, City College of New York, mgutman@ccny.cuny.edu

The other members of the committee are:
Margot Hillel, Australian Catholic University
Mary Clare Martin, University of Greenwich
Dirk Schumann, Universität Göttingen
Nicholas Syrett, University of Northern Colorado

During the second half of the twentieth century the towns and cities of Britain were transformed more extensively than at any period since the industrial revolution. Millions of people were moved from the centre of cities to new urban settlements in what Alison Ravetz called ‘the greatest internal migration in British history’; whole manufacturing industries and their associated communities and cultures, which had dominated much of urban Britain north of the Trent for two centuries, were swept away in a matter of decades; and the steady influx of peoples from the old empire and Europe created new community formations and ultimately a multicultural Britain which was also overwhelmingly urban. Britain’s towns and cities today are barely recognisable from the drab and damaged places that emerged from the Second World War.Continue reading CONF, CfP “The Transformation of Urban Britain since 1945”. University of Leicester, UK. 9./10.7.2013. Deadline: 1.2.2013

Scarcity is often considered as a fundamental condition of human societies. On the one hand, the state of not having enough has been at the bottom of a variety of strategies and techniques to overcome it; on the other, it has served as an explanatory argument for social order, for distribution or for conflict.